Where's the beef? Who cares?

I love a great burger.  I used to be willing to pay an indecent amount of money for a great burger,
because I feel like a burger entrée can be as good as the finest filet mignon.  Sometimes it even sounded better than a filet mignon, even though I did love a good filet mignon. 

I have stated in the past many times that I thought I could be plant based, except I would need to have a really good burger every now and then.  I thought that was real do-able.  I would just cheat every now and then and have that great burger.  Little did I know that I would lose my desire for meat, including those luscious burgers. 

My daughter stepped in to save the day with a great veggie burger recipe.  I think she got it off of the blog "Oh She Glows", but not sure about that.  The thing about a veggie burger is that you can't expect it to taste just like a beef burger.  I find that to be true with many plant based recipes.  If you don't compare it with the original non-plant based recipe, you will most likely be able to appreciate the new, plant based recipe.  At least that is how it has been for myself and my husband. 

We honestly like the veggie burgers just as much as our old, beloved beef burgers.  We saw a picture of a beef burger this weekend, with grease dripping down the side, (which was supposed to make it look appealing), and we both thought it looked rather unappetizing. 


The recipe I have included in this post makes a lot of burgers.  I think this time I came out with 17 good sized burgers.  I freeze the veggie burgers, and they make a great, quick week night meal.  I sometimes take them out of the freezer, and by the time I change my clothes and get ready to cook them, they have already started to thaw on the countertop. 

If you try this recipe, don't cook them on too high of a heat, just a medium heat.  If they are cooked at too high a heat, the sunflower seeds can tend to scorch.  I like to cook them in an old, heavy cast iron skillet.  If you have access to really great whole wheat buns, so much the better. 

VEGGIE BURGER

1 ½ cups onions, diced
3 large cloves garlic, minced
Flax eggs:  7 1/2 Tbsp ground flax plus 1 ½ cups warm water, mixed in a bowl
3 cups oats, processed into a flour
4.5 cups bread crumbs, homemade preferred, any type of bread
3 cups grated carrots
3 cups cooked black beans, rinsed and roughly pureed or mashed with a potato masher
¾ cups finely chopped parsley, (or fresh herb of choice)
1 cup toasted, unsalted almonds, chopped
1 ½ cups toasted, unsalted sunflower seeds
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 Tbsp tamari or soy sauce
4.5 tsp. chili powder
3 tsp. cumin
3 tsp oregano or Mexican oregano, dried
salt, 2 ½ tsp, approximate
black pepper to taste, about 1 ½ tsp

In a large skillet, saute onions and garlic in oil of choice.

Mix flax egg together in a small bowl and set aside for at least 10 minutes.

Place all ingredients into a large mixing bowl and stir very well. 

Make mixture into patties of desired size.

Cooking methods:  Can fry the burgers in a bit of oil on a skillet over medium heat for about five minutes on each side.  If baking in the oven, bake for 25-30 minutes, (15-17 minutes on each side) at 350, until golden and crispy.  To cook on an outside grill, need to pre-bake burgers for about 15 minutes in oven before placing on a pre-heated grill until golden and crisp on each side.  Suggested preferred method of cooking is frying in a skillet.

Stocking Up

 Thanksgiving in the past was a time when I would stock up on meat products.  I would usually buy an extra turkey or a couple of turkey breasts and an extra ham or two.  I wanted to take advantage of the sales prices on these items.  I have had an extra freezer for many years, so I was able to stash them away to use for months later. 

I thought the days of using the "loss leaders" in the grocery stores during Thanksgiving week were over with our new plant based diet.  The "loss leaders" are the items which grocery stores place at such a low cost that they usually are actually a loss for the store.  This is in hopes that you will buy the other 500 items you need for Thanksgiving in their store, and that it all works out in the end for a profit for them.  Although groceries seem so very high, the profit margin for the grocery stores is actually quite low.  They have to sell a lot of stuff to make the business profitable. 


Well, I was very pleased to get some wonderful buys this week.  I bought two ten-pound bags of russet potatoes for $1.50 each.  One store has sweet potatoes for .48 a pound, but I actually bought my sweet potatoes for .88 per pound because they were really beautiful and were locally grown.  I bought quite a few pounds of them also.  I used an empty shelf in my husband's home office for my makeshift "root cellar" to store all of these. 



My personal favorite brand. 


My favorite brand of vegetable broth was on sale for $2 per carton.  I bought 12 cartons.  I may go back and buy 10-12 more cartons when I pick up my perishables the day before Thanksgiving.  We eat lots of soup in the winter, and the use by date is about one year out.   I used to make my own chicken broth, and I plan to start making my own vegetable broth at some point.  I just need to get settled into this veggie thing a little more before I take that on. 



Potatoes being stored in my husband's office closet.

I also noticed that the produce was especially nice and fresh looking, more so than usual.   I was very grateful for that.  There were many other good sale items, for whatever type of diet a person practices.  My kitchen pantry and freezer are really stocked up now.  Get out there and take advantage of those sale items!

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Is everyone thinking about the Thanksgiving meal?  It is definitely on my mind a great deal of the time.  I think I have the menu figured out for the most part.  I am getting some really great help this year from my daughter and her husband, who know far more about plant based eating than I do. 


I am so glad that I don't need to think about wrestling a turkey this year.  I have made some really good turkeys in my time, but I have also made many turkeys that just weren't that good.  I think plant based foods are just so much easier to cook than meat.  I think it is because the plant based foods have less variability in their quality.  At least it is easier to look at a plant and determine whether it is fresh or in otherwise good condition.  It is much less so with meats. 


Whether you are planning a plant based Thanksgiving or a more traditional Thanksgiving, I hope everyone is taking care of themselves and not letting the stress take over the fun of this great holiday.
For me it truly is one of my favorite holidays. 

Time Management

To be able to provide whole food, plant based meals regularly at home can sure be difficult.  I work full time, and we eat most of our meals at home.  I also like to take leftovers to work for lunch most days.  That means a lot of kitchen time.  I also like to experiment with new ingredients and new recipes, which is also time consuming.  I look at it like a hobby, which just happens to result in our being able to have some good food at home. 

I cook a lot on the weekends.  Sometimes I cook ingredients which will later be used to put meals together.  Examples of this would be whole grains which take a long time to cook, such as brown rice, barley, wheat berries, etc.  I cook large batches, divide them into a few servings per container, and freeze them.  The key is to keep a running inventory of what is in your freezer, so it will get used up.  Some people post a list of what is in the freezer.  I just keep the list in my head, but I should try the posted list some day.

I also cook a single ingredient and use it in different ways, sometimes making two different meals out of it in the same day.  Yesterday was an example.  I roasted up two large butternut squashes, peeled and cut into chunks.  At lunch time we added some of the baked squash along with some other fresh vegetables that we had left over from the day before.  It made a great veggie plate.

For dinner last night, I used the recipe below to use up the rest of the squash.  I made up about 2 1/2 times the given recipe.  We had a bowl of the soup for dinner, and I froze the rest of the soup to serve when my family is visiting over Thanksgiving week. 

It takes a little more time to up the quantity of an ingredient or a recipe, but the savings in having ready made meals later more than makes it worthwhile.

Puree the mixture.

Here is the soup recipe.  It is delicious.  Be careful with the red pepper flakes, (pepperoncini).  I love red pepper flakes and put them in many of my dishes.  For some reason, the very small amount of red pepper flakes in this recipe gives much more heat than I would think possible.  The only reason I can come up with is that the blending of the soup opens the pepper flakes up more, giving out more heat.  I'm just saying, you have been warned.  If you are a hot pepper head, you might want a little more. 

 
ROASTED BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP

1-2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced celery
1/4 cup diced carrot
1 Tbsp. chili powder
red pepper flakes, 1/8  tsp., maybe less
black pepper, 1/4 to1/2 tsp.
coriander, ground, 1/2 tsp.- optional but really nice
salt to taste
4 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 cups roasted butternut squash
1/2 cup almond milk, or adjust to desired thickness of soup

Heat olive oil in large saucepan over medium heat until hot.  Add the onion, celery, and carrot.  Saute until soft but not brown, about 10 minutes.  Add the chili powder, red pepper flakes, black pepper, coriander, and salt and cook for a few minutes, stirring frequently.  Add the chicken or vegetable stock and let simmer for about 10 minutes, or until all vegetables are soft.  Take pan off of heat.  Add the previously roasted butternut squash. 

Puree the soup in a blender.  Return soup to the saucepan and reheat gently.   Add the almond milk and heat to desired serving temperature.  Do not overheat, as the almond milk may separate if it goes into a full boil.  Adjust the salt and pepper seasoning.  

This is best served with something with texture on the side, i.e. a sandwich, croutons, or toasted baguette rounds.

 Bring on that Old Man Winter.  We've got soup!

Thanksgiving foods?

My thoughts have been predominated the last week with what to serve for Thanksgiving.  I keep looking at plant based Thanksgiving recipes, but I can't seem to find any that I am excited about.  I had planned to try some out before Thanksgiving, but I just haven't gotten around to it. 

I really do not regret that I won't partake of turkey, ham, and some other traditional Thanksgiving foods.  I was never that crazy about turkey, although I always roasted one in the past.  I liked the soup that followed the turkey meal more than the turkey itself, and I can make an equally delicious soup without the turkey frame.

I think our favorite Thanksgiving food by far was the dressing.  I would make tons of it and freeze some for later meals.  My daughter is going to step in and save the day, because she has a great recipe from last Thanksgiving for a plant based dressing.  She said it was the best dressing she had ever had, so I am excited to try it.  She said it includes something called a field roast, (a type of faux meat).  I thought I had seen most of the plant based products, but I have never seen or heard of this. 
                                                      I love learning new things.  This will be fun.

I am so glad that my daughter and her family will
be with us this year for Thanksgiving.  They have
been plant based for several years.  When we visited them on Thanksgiving in the past, they would run down to the grocery store and buy us a roasted turkey breast.  I always thought that was so sweet.

I have been thinking about who else we should invite for Thanksgiving.  Sometimes my wonderful stepmother joins us for Thanksgiving.  I will ask her soon if she would like to join us this year.  I would love to know what she will think about our plant based Thanksgiving.  She is a very loving and supportive person, so I don't think it will concern her one bit. 

My sister and some of her family have joined us the last couple of Thanksgivings.  She has told me that she will be able to come on Thanksgiving Day, but that she will be having dinner with her sister-in-law and then joining us later in the afternoon.  I sure hope we didn't scare her off. 

Pizza pie baby!

I have missed pizza so much.  Some cities have pizza restaurants which cater to plant based diets very well, but our little city does not, at least not that I have found.  I know I could just order a pizza sans cheese, but that just doesn't sound very good. 

We needed to get pizza on our dinner rotation and get it going soon.  We actually ordered a regular pizza on Halloween night.  It was Halloween, and we deserved a treat, right?  Well, the cheese covered pizza wasn't that much of a treat.  It tasted really good, but we both could feel it the next day, not in a good way.

This weekend I used my old pizza/French bread recipe, and whipped up four pizza crusts.  I do it the lazy way, using my Pro Kitchenaid mixer with the dough hook, but it could certainly be done old school.  I par-baked all four crusts.  This makes for a much crispier crust, as the pizza toppings don't sog out the crust.  I cooled one of the pizza crusts and placed it in the freezer for a quick weeknight meal.


I already had homemade marinara and pesto in the freezer.  I put the marinara in a pan and reduced it to a pizza sauce consistency.  I caramelized some onions and red peppers for toppings.  Additional toppings were black olives, one sliced up Tofurkey Italian sausage, and marinated artichoke hearts.  



From what I have read and heard from others, vegan cheeses are really not very good and not worth the cost.  I had read that vegan mozzarella was the best of the vegan cheeses, (or least bad maybe).  I was feeling like taking a risk and bought some shredded mozzarella.  There is not much taste to it, but regular mozzarella doesn't have a ton of flavor either.  The package stated that the cheese melts and stretches, (which is one of the chief complaints from people regarding vegan cheese).  Well, I sure didn't see any stretch out of it, and it barely has any melting action.  Having said all that, we enjoyed the vegan cheese.  The key to us was to put very little on the pizza.  Maybe it's more of a visual thing, instead of looking at a naked pizza.

We loved the vegan pizzas very much.  My husband commented that he liked them just as much or more than the non-vegan pizza we used to eat.  We are real pizza snobs, so that is saying a lot.

Go ethnic!

Most plant based eaters probably already know this, but for newbies like us, it was a revelation.  Our great little city, (Tulsa, Oklahoma), does not have very many vegan or even vegetarian friendly restaurants.  We mostly make our meals at home, which is fine for the most part.  It gets old eating my own food all the time, though.  A girl needs to be taken out to eat once in a while for a break. 

Use your hands!  This amazingly large appetizer is muhammara,
roasted ras el hanout cauliflower salad, and tabouli, served with
laffa, a large flat bread made at the restaurant.

We are just starting to realize that some of the ethnic restaurants seem to be vegetarian and vegan friendly.  They do not advertise themselves in that way, but that way of eating simply fits in with their cultural dishes. 

Street falafel, sweet potato fries, with pomegranate ketchup.
Inside the wrap: falafel, hummus, pickles, beets, pickled slaw,
and chopped salad.

We had lunch today at a restaurant that serves Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine.  We were able to very easily piece together a plant based meal, and the food was absolutely delicious.  If you are in the Tulsa area, the name of the restaurant is Laffe.  We have no ties to this restaurant, but we will definitely be returning.






                                                 
Laffa Medi-Eastern Restaurant and Bar is located at:

111 N. Main Street
Tulsa, OK 74103
(918) 728-3147
www.laffatusla.com

Cooking for "outsiders"

I hosted my first dinner for non-vegans this past weekend.   I wasn't too concerned when we first discussed it, because we were cooking for a group of people in their mid 20's, who are for the most part interested in healthy living.  I thought it would be the perfect group of people to experiment on.   The closer we got to the dinner, the more I started second guessing myself.

The menu:  Appetizer was hummus with baked pita chips and crudités.  The entrée was a salad with red leaf lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, dried cranberries, chopped pear, toasted pecans, and homemade vinaigrette.  Alongside that we had a build your own entrée bar. 

We had quinoa, brown rice, roasted vegetables, (baby potatoes, carrots, red bell pepper, and butternut squash).  There was cashew cream to serve as a sauce.  Everyone made a stack with their favorite grain on bottom, followed by roasted vegetables, and topped with the cashew cream. 

So far, so good.  Everyone seemed to like the meal up to this point.  Then the trouble began.  I have not made any vegan desserts.  I don't cook a lot of desserts for just my husband and myself, so no experience with that yet.  I made a recipe for brownies.  Sounds yummy, right?  Well, I didn't mention that they were made with black beans.  They were really awful. 

I also made a pumpkin cheesecake, thinking that if it was good, I would repeat it for Thanksgiving.  Well, I won't be making this for Thanksgiving unless I am only feeding people I don't care for.  It was not good at all.  The crust was just graham crackers and applesauce.  It got nice and crisp in the oven, but by the time we cut it for dessert, the crust had lost it's crispness.  There was no hint of cheesecake, just a really heavy pumpkin filling.  They both went in the trash when everyone left. 

I told my husband when we began this new way of eating that there would be some really bad food coming out of our kitchen as we tried new recipes.  I am not familiar enough with the ingredients to be able to judge whether the recipe is good or not.  Hopefully as time goes by, I will get better at that and eliminate some of the bad recipes before ever trying them.


I am glad we had this group of people over.  I hope they saw that vegan food can be good, (except for my desserts).  Someone had to be the test group for me, and it couldn't have been nicer people.